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By the way, i can understand the problem; have you ever considered applications like mouse click and movement simulators?
The "start benchmark" button will ever be in the same position on the screen , so this task could be automated too.

Michael, seriously, if a solution like that would make you use unigine benches more, let us know and i will do my best to write a launcher that automates the process even in the basic unigine versions.

By the way, i can understand the problem; have you ever considered applications like mouse click and movement simulators?
The "start benchmark" button will ever be in the same position on the screen , so this task could be automated too.

Michael, seriously, if a solution like that would make you use unigine benches more, let us know and i will do my best to write a launcher that automates the process even in the basic unigine versions.

Unigine folks have troubles with proper OpenGL. (Missing glsl #version sic!!!)
Or there are bad OpenGL implementations out there...

By the way, i can understand the problem; have you ever considered applications like mouse click and movement simulators?
The "start benchmark" button will ever be in the same position on the screen , so this task could be automated too.

Michael, seriously, if a solution like that would make you use unigine benches more, let us know and i will do my best to write a launcher that automates the process even in the basic unigine versions.

Phoronix Test Suite has full support for all of Unigine Engine tech demos... I work very closely with Unigine and have access to demos pre-launch, etc. There's even special code-paths that can be activated via a Phoronix switch for the Unigine Engine to make it more automated friendly.

The issue doesn't come down to not wanting to use Unigine but often being buggy or problematic on different drivers, etc. Also would be nice if they did 64-bit builds.

Phoronix Test Suite has full support for all of Unigine Engine tech demos... I work very closely with Unigine and have access to demos pre-launch, etc. There's even special code-paths that can be activated via a Phoronix switch for the Unigine Engine to make it more automated friendly.

The issue doesn't come down to not wanting to use Unigine but often being buggy or problematic on different drivers, etc. Also would be nice if they did 64-bit builds.

Michael,

Don't Stress.

As the Romans ages ago learned. There is just no pleasing the masses.

Keep up the good work as I enjoy the benches and the insights they provide.

I think very few of the folks posting here actually understand the amount of vendor co-ordination required to get some things up and going.

What I still don't understand is why hardware manufacturers like AMD and nVidia keep their drivers closed source. If they are making profit from the hardware only, why close the software? What is so secret about it that they have to keep it closed source? In fact, I think open sourcing it should help them reduce the cost since the community would be doing some of the work on their behalf. Am I missing something?

In the case of graphics, drivers matter. They play a huge role in performance. This is why Nvidia and AMD bounce back and forth every couple of months on who's cards currently holds the performance crown during the current generation. Releasing the drivers as open source would also be releasing hardware documentation on the cards. Nvidia and AMD definitely don't want each other knowing how their cards are designed and how they work. Then you run into licensed technology from other vendors to showing dirty hacks.

The software is equally important as the hardware in the graphics arena.

In the case of graphics, drivers matter. They play a huge role in performance. This is why Nvidia and AMD bounce back and forth every couple of months on who's cards currently holds the performance crown during the current generation. Releasing the drivers as open source would also be releasing hardware documentation on the cards. Nvidia and AMD definitely don't want each other knowing how their cards are designed and how they work. Then you run into licensed technology from other vendors to showing dirty hacks.

The software is equally important as the hardware in the graphics arena.

How come this applies to GPUs but not CPUs, and how come Intel doesn't care about revealing hardware specs?

How come this applies to GPUs but not CPUs, and how come Intel doesn't care about revealing hardware specs?

It applies to GPUs but not CPUs because with a CPU the "published API" is the instruction set of the CPU so that part kinda has to be open. With a GPU the "published API" is a software abstraction, ie the top of a Direct3D or OpenGL stack, and vendors change the GPU HW instruction sets & configuration registers on a regular basis in order to improve performance and efficiency with recent and upcoming applications.

The best analogy is that the programming interface of a GPU is like the highly parallel micro-operation layer of an x86 CPU that sits behind the instruction decoder, which isn't open either.

I don't think it's correct to say "Intel doesn't care about releasing hardware specs" -- I'm sure their open source teams had to jump through just as many internal hoops as we did in order to get information out.